Defending the laywoman

On a balmy Saturday afternoon in the suburbs, I am strangling a much older woman with a diamond ring in her nose. When I loosen my grip she shows me her arms. ‘I’ll have to sue my daughter for bruises from you,” she says. ‘You’re a violent woman.”

My sparring partner blames her daughter for sending her to a self-defence workshop facilitated by 7th Dan Black Belt Karate Sensei Sanette Smit, aka Smitti.

Maybe my brute belligerence is a delayed reaction from the relentless dream I had the night before in which I was attacked by the devil personified with a state-of-the-art butcher’s knife. Or maybe it’s been pent up for two years since I heard about the workshop and put it off — which Smitti says is typical of a lot of women.

‘I had eight cancellations today,” she says. ‘One woman said she had to go to a kitchen tea.” She tells me most cancellations are when rugby is on telly because husbands don’t want to look after the kids. Typical.

I, for one, postponed it so I wouldn’t jinx my luck. But luck isn’t predictable. ‘Saying I’m not going to learn self-defence in case it means I will get attacked is like saying I’m not going to use a condom in case it means I will get Aids,” she says.

In a country with the highest rape per capita in the world, women cannot afford to feel impenetrable. So today there are about 20 women. Three are doing it for the second time.

There are three petite mothers swinging punches at their lanky daughters’ crotches. There’s an older woman, who arrived in a frilly white skirt and beaded sandals, now sporting her self-defence outfit complete with cross-trainers, who I later punch in the nose — by mistake. There’s a woman in a pink T-shirt with the word ‘animal” scribbled on it in cursive, who is slamming her partner’s ears with cupped palms. And another with an abstract image on her blouse, which looks like a hot iron, who is grabbing her partner’s skull and poking her eyes with her thumbs.

Of course, all the actions are intended to be pretend, but there’s a woman with frizzy hair who has already been labelled ‘the dangerous woman in the red shorts”. Someone whispers that she does a martial art called Muay Thai.

‘But the average woman can defend herself without martial arts. You don’t need a black belt to fight back, you need a state of mind,” says Smitti who is South Africa’s highest graded woman in Karate and one of the highest graded women in the world. She has practised and taught Karate for more than 30 years.

She was inspired to start running these workshops 20 years ago while writing a thesis on rape in order to get her third black belt. She interviewed rapists, and hundreds of women who have survived rape, and firmly believes that knowledge of the ‘tools” of self-defence can prevent rape.

‘I decided to put together these workshops to empower the average woman who will never do Karate,” says Smitti, author of South African Woman’s Guide to Self-Defence, which she says should be kept on every woman’s bedside table as a prophylactic.

But even without being physically armed with her literature, Smitti says you have a 99% chance of escaping an attack if you hit the sensitive target area of a rapist. Sensitive target area is a euphemism for balls.

‘He cannot take his groin to the gym and do workouts with it,” she says, as she demonstrates how to grab, pull and twist her female co-facilitator’s imaginary male genitals. Her action is merciless and unlike anything I have ever done or could imagine doing to a man’s scrotum.

Smitti says this is the biggest problem with most women. They are reluctant to hurt using physical strength.

‘To get out you have to make a mind shift. You have to hurt the guy. Pretend your three-year-old daughter is going to get raped and use that anger,” says Smitti. ‘You hit only the sensitive target areas — groin, ears, eyes, nose — and you keep going and you fight back.”

She speaks a lot about you as the woman taking control of the situation and making quick decisions by assessing how you are positioned, what you are wearing, where you are, how he grabs you, what weapon he is carrying.

Although she admits that no woman is immune to attack, she refuses to portray women as defenceless vulnerable victims. ‘Your body is your best weapon,” she says. But most of us don’t want to take responsibility for the one thing we can control. Many women are not used to feeling their power. 

One spindly woman in the workshop with a bob hairstyle, bobby socks and bright lipstick strikes out. ‘I’m scared now. I’m sore,” she moans. ‘She hit me on the ear.”

Smitti finds this attitude disempowering and simply assesses that there is no blood and moves on. ‘We are all in control of our attitudes. You have to empower yourself. Fight for your life and self-respect and don’t be intimidated,” she says.

For the final training exercise Smitti hands us mini punching bags so we can go all out. Unabated I take a last swing at the woman with the diamond in her nose. ‘You go girl. And you wipe ’em out!” she yells.

For more information visit www.selfdefence.co.za